


And on a fine May morning

by illwynd



Category: Thor (2011), Thor (Comics)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-19
Updated: 2012-02-19
Packaged: 2017-10-31 10:28:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/342993
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/illwynd/pseuds/illwynd
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Loki is still a child, Laufey comes to Asgard to demand the return of his son. Reluctantly, Odin and Frigga comply. Years later, the two brothers will meet again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And on a fine May morning

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a [prompt](http://norsekink.livejournal.com/7418.html?thread=14100474#t14100474) at the Norsekink LJ comm. Inspired by Broadside Electric's song "Silkie."

I.

When his father calls for him, he thinks it is because of his earlier exploits in the kitchens, stealing a still-cooling tray of Thor’s favorite sweet rolls. Loki is fully prepared to make a show of contrition and promise not to do such again.

He is not prepared for the sight of his mother standing by his father’s side, her eyes red-rimmed and her lip clenched between her teeth. He feels his heart beating faster from the sight. Then he looks at his father, and he has never seen eyes so deep with regret.

“Loki,” his father says, beckoning, and Loki goes to his side as if someone else is operating his legs.

His father’s hands press against his shoulders, heavily enough that it is as if he is restraining him, afraid Loki might run. And when Loki’s follows the line of his father’s vision, he is glad for those hands and the protection they promise, for there is a Frost Giant there, standing in the shadows. So impossibly tall, so unutterably strange.

For a moment, in the midst of his fear, Loki is almost curious. 

Then his father speaks.

“Laufey, King of the Jotnar. Loki… Odinson.”

The giant approaches, and his father holds him still as he reaches out a single finger to stroke along Loki’s cheek. Loki can feel the cold in it, spreading through him, worming deep. He looks down to see his hands have turned the same color as the Jotun’s skin.

He begins to scream.

II.

Odin calms their younger son somehow, tells him that he was a foundling child saved in the midst of a ruined temple upon the battlefield, and Frigga holds herself back from bolting forward to take him in her arms, to hold him, to promise not to let him go. There would be time later—a few minutes, a few minutes for a farewell—to sob out apologies and words of reassurance. That he would be well. That Laufey would take good care of him, and that he must never doubt that they still loved him, even if he could no longer be with them.

Loki stares at his own hands, his mouth open, eyes wide.

In desperation, away from the Jotun king’s view, she slips the small, unadorned band of silver onto his finger and murmurs against the soft shadow of his hair the words that hide it from other eyes. Only later will he notice that when he touches it to his lips, fine-etched runes appear on its smooth surface, runes of the names of their family. She hopes, each time, he will feel a spark of warmth and love at the sight.

III.

There is no answer that Odin could have given that would not have cursed him. Odin is not heartless. (A heartless man would never have lifted an enemy’s child from the shattered ground. Sheltered it. Raised it. Loved it.) Odin is not cruel. (A cruel man would have cared nothing for the consequences of what he is about to do.) What Odin is, is a king. He is responsible for far more lives than just the Jotun boy he considers his son.

He cannot return the Casket. He looks at Laufey, holds his red gaze in one fierce eye, seeking for indication that he comes not merely as a ruler but also as a sorrowing father.

Had he not found it, there among affront and possessiveness and conniving and patience, he would have sent them all to war. He would not turn over Loki to a parent who cared nothing for him.

Laufey calls him a thief but once more, when Loki cringes in horror away from his true sire.

Odin quickly forgets the accusation. He never forgets his son’s face, the disbelief shining wet and red in his eyes as he looks back one last time.

IV.

Laufey brings his son home. The tiny, sickly infant he had once been had given way to a quiet child with wide, intelligent eyes; still small, still a runt, but one with promise. Laufey had quashed the indignation he had felt upon seeing his child wrapped in Aesir skin, his true appearance hidden away like something shameful, and he had only frowned and stepped back when the boy began to panic.

Laufey brings his son home, and it is not what he had hoped for when he forced the captured elf to lead him to Asgard, but it at least means that Asgard will not have everything that rightfully belongs to Jotunheim.

V.

It is the first time that Thor has ever faced death. It is not like in the stories he’s heard told all around him for as long as he can remember. It’s his mother weeping as she holds him. It’s his father softly telling him that, no, he cannot see his brother’s body, for it would only upset him more. It is trying to understand how Loki could possibly have—of course Loki often did dangerous things in his mischief, but how could he have... fallen? Thor had seen his brother _that morning_. He balls his fists and yells at his parents to stop _lying_ to him, because Loki _wasn’t dead_ , he was just faking, he had to be—and he only stops when his mother crumples to the floor, her skirts pooling around her, her shoulders shaking, her hand pressed to her mouth.

Thor runs all the way to the bedchambers he and Loki shared, and there he looks everywhere and speaks to the air, begging his brother to come out. Then, when his parents follow and sit on either side of him, they hold him as he cries in great wracking, wailing, heaving sobs.

Eventually he falls asleep.

There is a funeral the next day. They still won’t let him see Loki’s body. He can’t say a proper goodbye. He still doesn’t quite believe.

Among Loki’s things there is a silver bracelet. Thor puts it on his wrist, hiding it under his sleeve. He feels a little better.

But it is a long time before he smiles again. He is like a small thundercloud wandering the heart of Asgard. He does not play, does not laugh, barely eats.

Then one day he finds he can think of his brother, think of how Loki once tricked him into trying to seat himself upon the most spirited steed in the stables, and only feel a lump in his throat for a moment and a soft, aching love in his heart.

Eventually his brother is just a memory. And a bracelet that he never takes off.

VI.

Loki wants his father to be proud of him, so he holds back the tears that always fill his eyes too easily. As Laufey takes him away from his home, he bites his lip and does not cry. He is good, he is strong, he is a child of Asgard. As Laufey leads him through the snow and ice of a place colder and darker than any place that Loki had ever imagined, he does not cry.

He cries later, though only when he is alone. He is not a child of Asgard after all, and he misses his father, his mother, his friends. He misses old Heimdall, even, though the guardian’s stern manner always scared him (and made him act twice as bold to cover it). Most of all he misses Thor.

Even when bitter, betrayed rage ignites in his heart at his mother and father—they lied, they lied, they _lied_ and they let these monsters _take_ him—he has no blame at all for his brother, who surely never knew either.

Over time, he learns to call Laufey “father” and learns to call Helblindi and Byleister “brother.” He wonders what his true family—the mother who cradled him in his earliest memories, the father who was neither silent nor cold but who was the greatest being in the universe, even more a giant than Laufey—are doing. He wonders what they told Thor. He wonders if Thor still thinks of him. He has nightmares in which Thor now despises him, calls him terrible names, believes him a mindless creature, does not love him. He has daydreams in which Thor is merely waiting to grow big and strong enough to come to find him and bring him home.

Jotunheim is not home. He learns the names of the flowers that sprout under the snow for one week a year, and he learns how to shape the ice in his hands, and he invents tricks to frighten those who laugh at the small, weak prince who thinks himself Asgardian. He makes few friends.

As he grows, Asgard begins to feel like something far away, a light he saw once in a dream. Eventually he accepts that he will never get to go back. Sometimes he can be seen rubbing at the base of his finger as if he were playing with a ring. 

VII.

Thor is grown. He has grown strong and arrogant and bold, and his father does not believe in his abilities. And though he has no brother beside him to goad him now, somehow he feels one day that there is something he must do. He recalls the stories Odin once told him, when he was a child. Tales of war with the Jotnar. Tales of power and glory and blood. He would prove himself in the same way.

He convinces his friends to accompany him on an expedition to Jotunheim. A show of force. He straps Mjolnir to his belt and runs his fingers along the decorated surface of his bracelet. Once he touched it to feel close to his lost brother, but he has not thought that deeply on it in years; it is now but a comfort, a habit.

They convince Heimdall to send them, though Thor finds the guardian nearly as intimidating as he did as a child.

Once upon Jotunheim, Thor shivers at the cold, but he will not think of turning back. This is what he was meant to be doing. He is certain of it.

VIII.

Loki is grown. He has grown dark and cunning and clever, and Laufey has come to admit that he will make a fine king one day. Loki does not find the idea appealing, but he keeps his thought to himself. And there comes a morning during the brief Jotun spring that he wishes to seek a particular rare snow-herb useful for the magic that he has become singularly adept at. He gathers a small group to accompany him; he feels that it is something he must do.

They trek in single file across miles, toward a remote vale he has been to only a few times.

When they reach it, he realizes too late that they are not alone.

The small force of Asgardians, armed and gleaming even in the dark, attacks before the group of Jotnar know they are there. Blood spills and slicks the ice. His retinue fights around him, but Loki is frozen to the spot.

It is Thor.

It could not be anyone else.

He shines like the sun. He fights like a god. He wears a bracelet Loki left behind so many years before. He is beautiful.

Loki has missed him so fiercely.

He steps out of the shadows of magic. He wants to believe Thor has come to find him. To rescue him, even though so much time has passed. They would always be brothers. They could not be strangers. Could not be enemies.

He watches Mjolnir as it glides through the air, and his heart skips a beat.

He is still smiling when Thor fells him.

IX.

All the Jotnar have been slain, and Thor is proud. After this fight, the vile brutes would slink back to their icy hideaways once more and remain there for another thousand years.

But Thor feels a stabbing guilt when he crouches above the smallest Jotun in the band and lifts its cold, limp hand. He isn’t sure why he feels so; he was only drawn by the sudden glint from its finger. And surely there can be no shame in taking such a pretty little spoil of the fight. It will be proof to his father that he could indeed lead their realm with strength and wisdom.

He clutches the ring in his hand as they return to the Bifrost site. He clutches it so tightly that it cuts into his palm.

His mother is there when he presents the ring and the tale to his father. The first thing he notices is the way she blanches at the sight.

He has only seen his mother weep that way once before.

He has only once seen his father’s eyes so empty and old.

They tell him the truth that they should have told him long ago.

He has not screamed that way since he was child.

Since Loki died. 

X.

His father banishes him, and Thor goes willingly. He barely notices anything that occurs around him.

He is sent to Midgard, alone and helpless, mortal and weak. Odin said it was to teach him humility and restraint. He wishes it were punishment.

Each night he sees the small Jotun’s blood on the snow, its skull caved in, its red eyes staring. Each night he wakes with tears on his cheeks. His brother. His Loki.

Odin did not take the bracelet from him, at least. Though everything else was left behind in Asgard, he still has that.

He knows Mjolnir fell with him. He cannot even think of trying to reclaim it, after what he used it to do.

He sits alone in the desert, wanders in a nearby town, begs for food and water. He cannot forgive himself, though he could not have known.

Eventually, though, he embraces this doom. He will live out this mortal lifetime. He will suffer the fate he condemned his brother to. He agrees to work for a man who offers to pay him to carry heavy things. He smiles when the other workers joke, but it is a false smile.

Then one day, out of nowhere, he sees a child walking alone in this Midgardian emptiness. A child with feather-dark hair and clever green eyes.

He knows it could be no one else.

He feels he has clutched the ring in his hand the whole time, for it is there when he calls out to his brother. When he returns to him what is rightfully his.

Loki strokes his finger along the cool metal of the ring, and he reaches out to the bracelet hidden under the sleeve of Thor’s flannel shirt.

And for the first time since he was a boy, Thor knows everything is going to be all right.

***


End file.
